Retail gravitation and economic impact: A market-driven analytical framework for bike-share station location analysis in the United States

Bike-share programs are becoming a more frequent and popular amenity for cities around the world. Current analytical models for optimizing the placement and location of bike-share stations seem underdeveloped and potentially subject to false calibration errors. This research builds on retail gravitation models and their derivates to develop a duplicable model for bike-share location in cities in the United States. The findings suggest retail gravitation theory is helpful to bike-share station location analysis. Additionally, the findings set a framework for other cities to use as well as identify future research.